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Nutritional strategies are effective in controlling the progression of chronic kidney disease (CKD) and its complications. To improve nutrition care processes, it is necessary to have information on the priorities of all the stakeholders (patients and health care professionals (HCPs)). Currently in Latin America, nutritional care for people with Non- dialysis CKD (ND CKD) is limited and the information related to their priorities is scarce. The aim of this study is to describe the priorities in food and nutrition in Chile as a preliminary study to be replicated in Latin America.
Descriptive cross-sectional study in which a survey was applied, developed by means of the international consensus by DELPHY methodology on nutritional treatment (IDON) questionnaire developed by the European Renal Nutrition working group, which owns its intellectual property. The questionnaire is divided into 5 categories (Renal diets for ND CKD patients, outcomes related to renal diets, other options for renal diets, safety of renal diets, dietary and nutritional support), 11 subcategories and 60 questions. A Likert scale from 1 to 9 was used to categorize the priority of each item. Values between 1-3 are considered low, 4-6 medium and 7-9 high importance.
The survey was disseminated through social media, email, and social networks. To analyze differences between patients and professionals we used CHI2
To date 120 surveys have been responded 69% (n=83) of which are from HCPs (54% was nutritionist/dietitian, 6.7% nurses, 5.8% physicians) and 31% (n=37) are patients.
The average age of patients was 48.3 ± 14.7, women 68% and of HCPs 38.6 ± 11.4, women 84%.
For all items the median value is greater than 7, so it is considered that both, patients and HCPs give high priority to the issues.
Differences in high priority between patients and HCPs were observed in the subcategories: Renal diets for CKD, where 59.2% (n=71) of the HCPs give high importance to the quality of the phosphorus ingested vs. 19.2% (n=23) of the patients and category Nutritional tools where 58.6% (n=69) of professionals give high importance to online education vs. 28.6% (n=34) of patients. The categories Dietary supplements for CKD, Renal function, and other clinical outcomes, have differences where HCPs give higher priority in these 6 questions than patients (table 1)
In this preliminary study we observed differences in perspectives between patients and HCPs, especially in the prescription of supplements, where HCPs give high importance to this, but patients do not. This could be related to the polypharmacy of CKD and adherence to it.
On the other hand, the difference in relation to the type of phosphorus is interesting, where for HCPs it is more important than patients. This difference in perspective may be related to the low number of nutritionists with training in CKD, especially in primary health care, which leads to less education on the part of patients on this issue.
Finally, the difference in priority regarding online education is striking, this could indicate that digital literacy in our patients is low and invites us to work on it.
Our goal is to complete 400 surveys in Chile and continue in Latam.